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A MAN WHOSE NAME is largely unknown marked out the path for today's black conservative journalists and commentators such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Armstrong Williams. He was a black man -- George S. Schuyler. Outspoken and pulling no punches, he began to write in the 1920s as a young socialist. But he finished his career as a columnist for The Manchester Union Leader, an arch-conservative New Hampshire newspaper. Schuyler opposed almost every action taken by Martin Luther King Jr. and lobbied ferociously against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Better than any other white man at the time, Schuyler made deeply flawed but potent arguments for segregationists and black accommodationists. In a 1963 essay opposing the proposed civil rights legislation, Schuyler wrote,
The civil rights laws are another typically American attempt to use the force of law to compel the public to drastically change its attitude toward and treatment of a racial group, the so-called Negro, which the overwhelming majority population does not care to associate itself with, does not wish to attend school with, does not choose to share its white collar and technical jobs with, and is opposed to sharing lodging with, and all the social contacts these involve.... Already in the South there are dozens of cities where Negroes are finding accommodations in hotels, motels, and tourist camps. There will be more changes with time and education. For this we do not need any federal legislation.... Have not the American people advanced sufficiently to let them decide in...